Family caregivers’ responses to a visitation restriction policy at a Korean surgical intensive care unit before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic

BACKGROUND: Since the COVID-19 pandemic, restricting family visits in the ICU has increased concerns regarding negative psychosocial consequences to patients and families. OBJECTIVES: To compare the quality of life, depressive symptoms, and emotions in family caregivers of ICU patients before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to explore families’ perceptions and suggestions for the visitation. METHODS: A cross-sectional descriptive survey was conducted in 99 family caregivers of adult surgical ICU patients from an urban academic medical center in South Korea (February to July 2021). The WHO's Quality of Life-BREF, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression, and Visual Analogue Scale were used to assess quality of life, depressive symptoms, and emotions, respectively. The Family Perception Checklist was used to assess families’ perceptions and suggestions about the visitation restriction. Results were compared with the data from our previous survey (n = 187) in 2017. RESULTS: Family caregivers were mostly women (n = 59), adult children (n = 43) or spouse (n = 38) of patients with mean age of 47.34 years. Family caregivers surveyed during the pandemic reported worsening sadness (54.66 ± 28.93, 45.58 ± 29.44, P = 0.005) and anxiety (53.86 ± 30.07, 43.22 ± 29.02, P = 0.001) than those who were surveyed in. While majority of families were satisfied with the visitation restrictions (86.9%), only 50.5% were satisfied with the amount of information provided on the patient's condition. CONCLUSIONS: Visitation restriction is necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic despite sadness and anxiety reported in caregivers. Hence, alternative visitation strategies are needed to mitigate psychological distress and provide sufficient information to ICU family caregivers.